Bathtub Review: Oni

Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath. Oni is an 8 page module for Mothership by Jamie Heitler with art by Thomas Heitler. In it you sneak onto a mob boss’s ship, while avoiding a hallucinating AI. I think I was given a comp copy by the author, maybe? Basically, this a 16 room heist, with 4 wild NPCs with different agendas, and 12 or so monsters patrolling the halls at night. These NPCs are great, and they interact in interesting ways with each other, the world at large, and with your time and location. The module operates on a 20 minute timer, which impacts the behaviour of the androids on the ship. During the day, they’re friendly and do maintenance, so long as you do nothing to attract attention. At night, lights turn off,…